Why I support pretty much any strike by pretty much anyone, anywhere, about anything

If you live in or around London, or work there, or know anyone who does, your social media will have been drenched in anger at the Tube strike this morning, along with the occasional voice popping up with: “I was saying Boo-urns.”

Anyway, many people’s first instinct is to blame the strikers (even if they couched in terms of support for nurses / teachers / anyone except tube drivers), so I thought I’d explain why mine isn’t.

To begin, I must declare an interest: I intend to use the Night Tube. I’d rather the person in control of the metal drunk-ferry burrowing its way through subterranean London at peak suicide time felt well-rested and recompensed and able to concentrate on getting me home without being dead.

They’re actually fighting for your pay and conditions

Wait,what? No they’re not? I don’t earn that much.

In a country where more people are employed with better pay and conditions it puts EVERYONE in a better position to negotiate with their employer. The problem with this strike is that rail unions are pretty much the only ones that have been doing their job for the last 30 years.

When unions don’t fight for pay and conditions, they are pushed down, because there are lots of people wanting them pushed down. And if they’re pushed down in one industry, they will be pushed down in another.

Don’t believe me?

The main argument you’ll hear against the Tube drivers is that other people in other industries don’t earn that much. Because their pay hasn’t risen in line with inflation since the seventies, whereas the RMT has made sure Tube drivers’ has.

The low pay of others is used as a stick to lower the pay of everyone else.

However, in a world where everyone has decent pay and conditions is much more difficult for employers to make people accept painful changes in working conditions because there are lots of other places they can go. Well-paid work that offers good benefits is contagious, it gives you options. It gives you the chance to say “Sod this. I’m going to be a train driver.”

It’s part of the fight for a better world

I know, I know, it’s terribly unfashionable to want a better world nowadays, and even more gross and decrepit to actually try and do something about it. I’m old. Deal with it.

Which is what many people are telling the strikers:

If the real world sucks, we shouldn’t get over it. We should fight it. That’s what you do when something sucks. That’s what you’re meant to do.

That’s what being a decent human being is. Not getting over the things that suck, and not getting over the things that suck for other people as well as for yourself.

I’m tired of the hideously unproductive people of Nepal coming whining to me every time one of their mountains falls on their heads. Welcome to life in the Himalayas. It sucks. Get over it.

If we get over it every time something sucks then things will just continue to suck and then begin to suck more and more as the people who are making it suck see us getting over it every time something sucks.

(Incidentally, that “good luck” comment pretty much shows why, if every union fought like this everyone would get paid more. Because you wouldn’t need luck. Those jobs would be available.)

What is a strike?

I appreciate that none of this will convince people who fundamentally think that certain people shouldn’t be entitled to be consulted when their working hours are changed drastically overnight.

But it is an important part of a free market that when someone wants to renegotiate a contract, by, say, making you now essentially nocturnal for a significant part of your life, that you should have a say in whether that’s an acceptable amendment to your contract.

Because that’s the way contracts work.

You don’t get to change them and at the same time expect the other party to continue working as they did before. It’s a process of negotiation, and as a working person one of your negotiating tools is your right not to work.

It’s your key tool. Your right to say, “Nope, I’m not doing that. It doesn’t pay enough, it’s too dangerous, it will ruin my home life. I’m not doing that for that.”

And if an employer can come up with an offer you are willing to work for, then that’s just dandy.

It’s fundamental to human dignity, to the idea of control over your own life to be able to decide what is worth you doing for what money. To enter into a contract as an equal.

“Would you do this for this much?”

“Yep!”

Or:

“Would you do this for this much?”

“Nope!”

That’s the way free markets are meant to work. It’s the way life is meant to work. It’s about having the ability to dispense with the one asset you really have – your time on this planet – in the way you decide will be most beneficial for you and your family.

And every assault on pay, or conditions, for anyone in any industry narrows the options for us all. It means there are fewer jobs that you would find worth doing for what they pay, you have fewer options.

That’s why I support today’s strike, and that’s why I support every strike.

Point of information: the starting salary of a tube train driver is £49,673, not £35k.

Your argument that improving tube train drivers’ pay and conditions gives other people options because they can always be a train driver is a bit disingenuous. There just aren’t that many tube train driver jobs, and they are all taken! You might just as well say bank managers’ salaries should be doubled because that gives other people more options. In fact the one thing that will give other people options would be to create more tube driver jobs, which is what night time running will do.

You say that drivers are being asked to make a significant part of their life nocturnal, but that’s not what LU is claiming. They say that only a few existing drivers will be asked to work extra nights, and only for a short transitional time.

I suggest you read the article again. This time, don;t insert any of your own ideas, and do not “skin through it”.

Now. The point was NOT that people “can always be a train driver”. The points made were very clear. It was plainly (and repeatedly) said that

When *ANY* union stands up for the rights of its members (which they all SHOULD be doing, and are not) their actions help to create an environment where “standing up for decent working conditions” is easier to do. It gets other people thinking that THEY should not have to accept crap pay and bad hours. It gets employers used to the idea that people have a right to collective bargaining. When this happens (and it has happened in the past) it becomes normal to expect a reasonable deal, and workers are willing to help each other put pressure on bosses who are right asses.

I grew up in a place where, 30 odd years before my birth the local police (off duty in theory) shot people for joining unions. Cops came by tin the middle of the night and burned their homes down while they were sleeping. The workers lived in drafty small shacks, and the owners lived in mansions. There were real shooting wars going on.

A point of reality for you – the first strike in known human history happened in Egypt and it was a strike of people who worked on the pyramids (no… they were not built by slaves).

People seem to be angry these days with ANYONE who manages to get decent treatment at work, when the more appropriate response is to be ANGRY about all the people who do not.

For over half a century union labor was the backbone of the UK. It meant people had proper training and proper pay. That is until Thatcher/Reagan came along, and went about intentionally breaking unions for the benefit of their wealthy election contributors.

Hi – just wanted to say – this article was totally spot on and is being roundly shared across Facebook. Extremely well put and certainly summed up how I felt … So much so I really wish I’d written it 🙂

It’s a pity so much of this isn’t really true. Tube driver salaries haven’t “kept pace with inflation” – they have massively outstripped inflation (£10,000 over the course of the last four years).

People don’t have the opportunity to say “sod this, I’m going to be a tube driver”, as the number of people trying to be tube drivers vastly exceeds the number of positions on offer.

Pay increases for tube drivers are not helping all people negotiate better deals – fare increases (typically inline or exceeding inflation) are just squeezing commuters who are getting below inflation rises.

For me, it’s quite telling that the unions are highlighting what is not in the offers, rather than what the offer is. By talking about “bulldozing through terms”, “wrecking work / life balance”, and “burnt out”, they are stressing that they are being rostered in a potentially dangerous way. But how real is that? What really are the proposed rosters? Because at the very least, at an absolute minimum, rostering will have to comply with EU work time regulations – which guarantees rest periods, etc. Maybe tube drivers should have longer rest periods, and fewer nights, but we aren’t being told what the actual rostering is. But it’s almost certainly not as bad as the unions are trying to suggest.

I do completely agree about negotiating contracts. But does negotiating a contract change really necessitate a strike? They originally agreed and signed contracts, and that either gives TfL the freedom to change the terms in this way. Or they haven’t, which means getting agreement from the workers. In which case, you just don’t agree to the contract changes. No need to strike – if the workers, en masse, do not agree to the contract changes, then TfL can’t change the contracts, and they can’t go ahead with the plans. No strike, but no new rosters.

I don’t want to be against strikes. They are a fundamental right for getting fair treatment. But there are many courses of action, in many cases alternative means are more appropriate. Strikes should be an action of last resort, but sadly, with some unions they are much closer to an action of first resort.

I was on a picket line and a guy pulled up in a car and abused us for being on strike,stating that his son worked at McDonalds and was only getting $9 an hour and we should be ashamed.
I found it amazing and told him so,that he thought it acceptable that a money making machine like McDonalds should be able to screw his son over by paying such a pittance and he thought that was OK !.
We need to wake up to the screwing by these corporations paying huge salary’s to their directors and backed up by right wing Murdoch press.
If you consider your self working class and vote Conservative you are kidding yourself.

I fully support the principle of removing your labour from your employer as a means of airing your grievances. However, no matter what spin is put on it – the greedy millionaire tube drivers in their gold plated carriages wanting extra slaves or hard working tube drivers being forced to work nightshifts without negotiation or compensation – the simple fact is millions of people couldn’t get to work and they’re powerless to do anything about it. Just as the patients whose nurses didn’t get in and the students whose teachers didn’t get in – the knock on effects of a tube strike are huge. Additionally, it’s a one day strike. It’s perceived as a tantrum and nothing else. If the unions were really upset they’d go on strike and not return to work until their grievances are resolved. Instead, they just have a day off work inconveniencing millions of people and achieve just one thing – commuters lowering their opinions of them. In short, I fully support the right to strike but the tube unions need better PR people because the paying customers ultimately feel like we’re being held to ransom. This article and the comments on it are one of a number of examples demonstrating this point. The article sets out some facts then people come along and say those facts are wrong these are the facts – leaving the casual reader and tube customer with a large number of contradicting facts to sort through.

Reblogged this on All About Work and commented:
In response to the one-day strike by Transport for London workers this week, Nathaniel Tapley provides this eloquent and passionate explanation of why it’s important for everyone to support workers on strike. “Every assault on pay, or conditions, for anyone in any industry narrows the options for us all. “

Striking as a tool in labour negotiations makes sense, and I fully support your argument about fair wages for all, but it can be overused. In this country people strike almost systematically to start off any change process, almost as a ‘picure de rappel’ or booster shot every time a situation heats up. I support the London tube workers, however, as strikes on your side of the Channel are used sparingly.

just because a majority vote for it doesn’t make it sensible. The majority of workers in longbridge car plant were in favour of the 500 odd strikes there in 2 years in the late 70s. Needless to say whether they were right or not it’s no surprise at all that british leyland isn’t around anymore. Personally if I was a tube driver I’d keep quiet and enjoy my 50k salary and 43 days of holiday. After all the job is ultimately as doomed as the guy who’s Job it was to walk in front of the cars with a flag. Keep quiet and you’ve got another 20 years – make a fuss and Londoners are eventually going to say oh bollocks let’s just a computer in.

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Lots of talk about greedy tube drivers and what they earn lots of people on here venting there anger due to the strikes because bores is a master at conning people with tales of 200 pounds per shift on night tube and a 2 per cent rise and drivers will have a choice of working night tube all of which are not true 1st the 200 pounds is not per shift it is Saturday’s only for a short time until night tube is up and running approx 1 year then it will be removed 2 per cent rise is actually 1 per cent and a 500 bonus not part of your pay at all half of which will disappear in tax and insurance as for being able to choose if you work night tube that’s based on if they get enough volunteers to do it people will probably volunteer while the 200 for Saturday’s is still payable but once it is removed no one will volunteer also boris and tfl are being very vague about how often drivers will have to do these extra weekends they talk about what a fabulous deal this is but they will not show the unions anything in writing guaranteeing it will be every drivers choice work night tube tube drivers are mums and dads who have children and like everyone else we like to spend some weekends with them we already work a lot of weekends and bank holidays to say they will not work anymore weekends is just not true as night tube is going to run at weekends only while boris and tfl senior managers are all at home dipping in to there £2.5million bonus that they have just shared as tube drivers we do not go on strike lightly as some people think and we do not enjoy causing passengers problems these strikes are a last resort I hope this clears up a few misconceptions we all hope that tfl get back around the negotiating table and come up with a fair deal